Was there something on the website that was omitted in the new design? A tool/ news story etc. Maybe they were doing a lot more PR than they are now so it has resulted in less branded traffic. It does sound very strange but doesn't sound like it is a penalty because you would have lost your rankings which hasn't happened.

The best thing would be to clean up the bad links, file a reconsideration request and then 301 the old domain to the new one...that is if you have some good links to the old domain. If you only have spammy links then starting afresh would probably be easier.

PR and SEO do go hand in hand though, if they have an external/internal PR agency then use the coverage they provide and use it contact bloggers, put it on social media websites etc. It's something I do for our clients and works quite well. Use various branded links in the content and push that out to websites/bloggers that will help influence customers.

Ok, you'll probably be able to get the good links for your new domain then. Good luck with it all.

Why not spend your time and money on improving your own listings and content rather bidding on competitors names? The CTR is going to poor whatever you do because it isn't really what the customer is looking for.

Hi pert,

I would recommend you 301 each URL to a relevant one on the new website rather than just redirect all to the homepage. As well as being the best way to do it from an SEO point of view, it is also the best for users as they will still go to a relevant page. Also if anyone has links to the old website they will be sent to a relevant page.

When going through a website migration you should always redirect old pages to the most relevant new page. For me, it doesn't matter whether that is an internal page or homepage. If you redirect the old homepage to the new homepage and the content is not relevant then you are going to have a high bounce rate as customers will not be seeing the right page for their search query.

It may be worth tailoring the design to show people that they are on a new website (sounds daft but users sometimes need the reassurance) and this way they are more likely to remain on the website even if things aren't exactly the same. It is probably a good time to go through your link profile to double check the keywords as well, make sure you have a mix of branded and non-branded keywords (which it sounds like you have already).

Have you tried to spell it with "ae" rather than with the umlaut? So it will read Schallpegelmessgeraet. Not sure if Google Germany can read umlauts and I'm guessing with the problems you are having, they may not be able to.